


Magic Thinking

by citrusfriend



Series: Poetry [34]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Parents, Bad Parenting, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Cults, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Generational Abuse, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Poetry, Sexual Abuse, cults mostly in subtext, i should make that a tag, metaphorical blood and gore, this is heavily coated in metaphor so no graphic csa or anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29106102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrusfriend/pseuds/citrusfriend
Summary: I used to believe in her the same way desperate widowsused to flock to crystal balls,the way children used to place pencils on top of each otherand call a man's name.
Series: Poetry [34]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1320233
Kudos: 1





	Magic Thinking

My mother thinks she is the medium for the dead child I used to be

and I wonder at what a skilled fraud

she's turned out to be.

I used to believe in her the same way desperate widows

used to flock to crystal balls,

the way children used to place pencils on top of each other

and call a man's name,

but recovery is the cruelest debunker I know.

I wonder how she can ignore the strings,

the flipped switches,

the tacky excuses hung up like decorations,

but I think delusion is her addiction.

She cannot understand that

the people who provide these pretend props

are the very perpetrators of the pain

she tries so desperately to vanish into thin air.

She cannot seem to understand

that the lies they left her with

were to keep her from believing anything else.

I think once my younger sibling turns eighteen,

my mother will try her first vanishing act.

She's been planning it for so long, you see.

But I won't promise to come to her show.

She has cut me in half too many times

for me to see her tricks as anything other than malicious.

This is not to say I do not also blame the stagehands,

the ringleader,

the directors,

the writers.

But I did not stare into their eyes while the saw met my skin,

I did not cling to them while they disappeared my body parts.

They all became so inured to the sight of fake blood

that they did not notice when it became real,

but it was my mother was the one who made me bleed

and scrubbed me clean.

We have left the circus now,

but the show goes on.

The ringleader trafficks his act through my hometown even now

and my mother does not know who she is

without the production.

Neither of these are my concern;

I am a prop no longer.

It is impossible to forget what your own insides look like,

impossible to forget when it smells like

when you nearly drown in your own blood.

But I am free

and I am not bleeding.

This is more than I ever though I could be.

**Author's Note:**

> 3/27/19 & 1/31/21


End file.
